


An afternoon at Tuileries

by anna_chronistic



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Comedy, Fanart, Gen, Jehan is easy to make fun of, Jehan tries to be sassy, Joly is easy to make fun of, Music, One Shot, Poetry, Slice of Life, lots of references, not so much Bossuet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-02 07:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13313112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_chronistic/pseuds/anna_chronistic
Summary: Bossuet struggles to climb a tree, Jehan tries to understand his friends' sense of humor, and Joly may be the worst lyricist ever.





	An afternoon at Tuileries

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to write more canon era fics (although history isn't really my best subject :P). Comments are much appreciated!

**April 27, 1832**

Jehan is sitting on a park bench during a sunny afternoon at Tuileries Garden. He liked being outside, away from the narrow roads of the city, the omnibuses, and the occasional debonair bourgeois who would gawk at his outfits. Today Prouvaire was barefoot and wearing a purple shirt that looked liked it belonged in a different century, and baggy pants that were far too short. Similar to his variety of awful outfits, he would often switch up the types of flowers that he put in his hair. This particular day, he had some orchids and magnolia flowers in his braided hair and for some reason he was sneezing a lot. To add to his anachronistic motif, he also had a lyre, a harp-like stringed instrument dating back to ancient Greece. It was a gift from his aunt for his birthday, as he had turned 23 a week ago. It wasn't tuned exactly like a guitar or a violin, so he was still figuring out how to play it. While he was experimenting with chord progressions, he spotted a bald man and a man with a cane in the distance. Surely those people were Laigle de Meaux and Joly, as they always accompanied each other.

"Hello, Jehan. It is nice to see you here," said Joly.

"Oh hello, Bossuet and Joly. I'm surprised to see you two here," said Jehan.

"Joly came here get away from the miasmas of the metropolitan area, and you're here because you're an introvert, I assume," said Bossuet.

"You know me so well," he said before sneezing into his sleeve.

"What's that stringed instrument you have there?" Joly asked Jehan. "Is it some type of guitar?"

"It's a lyre. It is similar to an early version a harp, and is best suited for mixolydian style songs. I received it recently as a gift," Jehan sniffed.

"I must say, you look a lot like a medieval minstrel," Bossuet said, observing his outdated outfit and peculiar instrument.

"And Bossuet would make the perfect jester! He could tell puns and make a hilariously futile attempt at dancing. It would be quite spectacular," said the medical student.

"That would be fun," said Bossuet. "Can you play a song?"

"I'm not well-versed in music from the Middle Ages, but I think I can play one in Sapphic meter," Jehan said, taking out a teal handkerchief and blowing his nose.

"Oh, so you play the lyre _and_ trumpet?" Bossuet teased.

"Well that was louder than I expected. Sorry about that," Jehan said, blushing. He continued, playing a few chords on the lyre and then began to sing. His croony yet rough singing voice was slightly different than when he talked normally.

_But come—if ever before_  
_having heard my voice from far away_  
_you listened, and leaving your father's_  
_golden home you came_  
_in your chariot yoked with swift, lovely_  
_sparrows bringing you over the dark earth_  
_thick-feathered wings swirling down_  
_from the sky through mid-air_

"Bravo, Prouvaire!" Joly and Bossuet were impressed.

"Why thank you," said Jehan. "I must say, you and Bossuet are so creative with your puns, I think you might have an aptitude for writing lyrics."

"That sounds like a good idea. If you play a metered instrumental, I can think of some lyrics and sing along," Joly said.

"Oh please, Jolllly. You're such a _lyre_ ," Lesgles said. "Grantaire and I both know that you possess no artistic qualities in the field of writing."

"Nonsense, Bossuet. I can sing just fine," said Joly. So Jehan started playing the same instrumental that he did before, and Joly sang along in his melismatic tenor:

_Marius is a baron and a lawyer_  
_He speaks German as a second language_  
_Dolphins like to swim inside the ocean_  
_There's no word that rhymes with 'language'_

Joly was good at singing, but the lyrics that he came up with were absolute trash. "So how was it?" Joly asked both of them.

"Uhhh..." Jehan was thinking of something to say without blatantly telling Joly that his lyrics were awful.

"You can't rhyme words with themselves, genius!" Bossuet said, playfully nudging Joly. "Alas, my poor Joly, you cannot write at all."

"But not every poem rhymes, and there are some poems that repeat words and rhyme them with themselves," Jehan explained.

"Yes, I think I know which one you're talking about," Joly said. And he started singing the nursery rhyme in question:

_Lonzon brishes fallin dow, fallin dow, fallin dow_  
_Lonzon brishes fallin dow_  
_My fair lady ___

Joly said in barely recognizable English.

"I'm going to require the top cryptologists to understand what the hell you just said," Bossuet joked. He got up and started heading southwest, where the trees and bushes were. Jehan and Joly followed suit.

"Is that not the London Bridges nursery rhyme?" Jehan asked Joly.

"Precisely. I guess that makes you a top cryptologist," Joly quipped.

"I'm so honored to be a top cryptologist," Jehan smiled. And then he sneezed.

"Bless you, Jehan. Hey Joly, why don't you take off that coat of yours? It's broad daylight," Bossuet pointed out.

"It's too cold," Joly complained.

"You're always cold, Joly," said Bossuet.

"That's because I'm accustomed to lower latitudes than this," said the medical student. "I grew up in Hendaye, a town bordering Spain. My nearest neighbors were a family in Spain, the Trujillos, and their children would call me Mateo." Jehan now realized that this made sense because of Joly's southern accent and how he would occasionally roll his r's.

"You're from a border town as well?" Bossuet said. "I lived in Forbach for ten years. The city is just a stone's throw from Germany. I can't speak German, though."

_"¿Estás diciendo que viviste cerca de Alemania durante diez años, pero no puedes hablar el idioma Alemán?_ " Joly said to Bossuet in Spanish. 

"Yes? No? Maybe? I haven't a clue what you just said, you bilingual bastard," Lesgles teased.

"Joke's on you," said Joly. "I have found speaking another language to impress many a grisette. Especially in Paris for some reason."

"Euh, you're probably right," said Bossuet. "Are none of us originally from Paris?"

"I think not," said Prouvaire. "I'm from Tours."

"No wonder we all moved to Paris," said Joly.

"That is because nothing of any significance has happened in Tours since 732," Jehan joked.

"Speaking of 732, you dress like you're from that year. Purple was considered a color of royalty and not merely spilt wine on someone's shirt, and folk were dropping dead from the bubonic plague," Bossuet said.

"Well, you look like...nevermind," Jehan said, trailing off. "Wasn't the bubonic plague in the mid-14th century?"

"Both of you are wrong about the plague," Joly said. Now Bossuet regretted bringing up the black plague. "The bubonic plague isn't merely a thing of the past; it can happen any time, any place. Modern civilians can have it. Your uncle's cousin could have it. You could have it, I could have it."

"And why is that the case this time?" Bossuet rolled his eyes.

"There is a theory that the plague is spread by fleas, and that isn't a good sign. You see, when I was a child, I was a big thumb sucker and puppy lover. I would pet my puppy and suck my thumb at the same time and get bitten by fleas a lot. I was a dirty little fingernail and thumb sucker, puppy lover. So I'd just suck my thumb, pet my dog and this thumb would get—"

"You'd switch?" asked Lesgles.

"I'd switch. I'm left-dominant, but I would switch because this one would get too pruney. Who knows what the hell I was doing? I could have even accidentally swallowed some fleas."

"That was years ago," Bossuet criticized. "You'll be fine, I assure you."

Jehan was surprised at how carefree Joly was in the past. It wasn't that he was a buzzkill. He was a genuinely funny person, the second-drunkest member of Les Amis de l'ABC who was somehow both happy-go-lucky and neurotic at the same time. "From what I can tell, you have changed quite a lot. Do you not like dogs anymore?" he asked Joly.

"You're right. Before I started medical school, I did things that I wouldn't dare do today. I swam in the ocean and would collect old driftwood and ride the waves with them. I just didn't give a damn. I still like dogs, but over the years I have developed more of a preference for cats. The only thing that really disturbs me about them is when they wind up on a dissection table. I'n not sure if they find them dead, or if they find them and kill them. As a medical student, I shouldn't be bothered by this, but for some reason I hate it. It's so uncanny. Oh my, I'm rambling quite a bit."

"Those poor cats," said Jehan. "It's so sad the way animals are treated. An English philosopher whose name escapes me said this: The question is not can they talk, nor can they reason, but can they suffer?"

"I think that was Jeremy Bentham," Bossuet said to Jehan. "He was one of the founders of the concept of utilitarianism."

"Yes, that is right, Bossu—" Jehan turned around to avoid sneezing on Bossuet, but he actually ended up sneezing in Joly's direction. Joly flinched, worried about catching Jehan's supposed cold.

"Sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen," Prouvaire said, his eyes downcast.

"No worries, Jehan. You probably caught a cold from not wearing any shoes," Joly hypothesized.

"I don't think there's any correlation between the two," the law student said.

"Be that as it may, walking around barefoot still isn't a good idea. What if you step on a piece of glass or some jagged rocks?" said Joly.

"Or what if king Henry VIII came back to life and just started stepping on people's feet?" Bossuet said. That bizarre joke resulted in shrill laughter from Joly.

"You sound like a witch," Bossuet said.

" _Double, double, toil and trouble_  
_I forgot the rest of the line_ ,"

Joly said doing his best witch impersonation, but then he stopped abruptly. "You know what, I'm not even going to venture there. I know I'm bad at this," he said returning to his normal voice.

"A few centuries ago, you would so get burnt at the stake for witchcraft because they mistook your science experiments for black magic," said Bossuet.

"I may laugh like a witch, but my experiments, I assure you, are black magic-free," the medical student said. "But the executioner would probably set me on fire anyway, so an explanation probably wouldn't be worth it."

"Oh Joly, the scientist who's willing to go through the fire, but not through the rain. You don't want to go outside when it's raining, yet you're content with getting burnt at the stake for witchcraft," Lesgles said.

"I didn't mean it _that_ literally," Joly corrected.

"What if it was raining during the execution day?" Jehan joked.

"That'd be the only time I'd be glad that it's raining," Joly smiled. "But if I were to be executed, I would want to get the old guillotine. I want to test the theory of how long consciousness can be retained after decapitation."

"But how would you tell them the results?" Jehan asked.

"I'd come up with a code. I'd wink my eyes like this: right, right, left, right, left. With a pattern like that, I can let the executioner know that it isn't a coincidence."

"Can't you just tell them?" Bossuet asked.

"Severed heads can't talk, Bossuet," Joly said matter-of-factly. "Although I could come back as a ghost and tell them. And if I actually get the guillotine, you can keep my skull, Jehan!" Joly said with his cheery gap-toothed smile.

"Just when I thought Grantaire was the morbid one, you open your mouth and I realize that R isn't all that bad," said Bossuet. Joly playfully tapped Bossuet with his cane and Jehan blew his nose. Jehan seemed to notice that Bossuet and Joly (and their other friends) tended to tease each other as jokes. But he didn't quite fit in with this brand of humor, as he was far too demure to say anything that could be perceived as insulting.

"Obviously I don't want to be executed, but things can be worse, no? I'd rather have gunmen fusillade me than die slowly of an incurable disease," said Joly.

"Well you won't have to worry about fusillading, because the chance of us getting executed is exceedingly low," said Jehan. As the three students were walking towards the south end of the park, they spotted a rather tall tree with white flowers. It looked a bit out of place, but fun to climb.

"What kind of tree is that?" Bossuet asked. "It looks rather peculiar."

"It's a magnolia tree, named after botanist Pierre Magnol," Jehan said.

"That looks fun to climb," Joly hinted. Jehan jumped and grabbed onto a branch (which was very high up) and was able to get footing on the trunk of the tree while pulling himself up using upper body strength. Within seconds, he had already moved up to where the flowers were. Despite being rather small, Jehan was stronger than he looked. Bossuet had looked away briefly, and when he looked back, Jehan was already really high up the tree.

"It seems as though you teleported there. Are you a witch as well?" Bossuet joked. "Speaking of witches, it's your turn, Joly." 

The medical student went near the branch that Jehan had used to traverse up the tree. Joly and Jehan looked a lot like fraternal twins, but unlike Jehan, Joly was not stronger than he looked. He was just as strong as one would expect a short, scrawny man with a bad leg to be. "There is no way I can reach it," he said. "The only jumping I can do is jumping to conclusions." So Joly went over to a branch that was lower and much flimsier. He jumped, trying to reach it again, but he couldn't even reach the lower one.

"I cannot jump high enough. I'm afraid I shall have to use my cane as a pole vault," said Joly. Prouvaire noticed that the heel of one of Joly's boots was taller than the other, which would make it difficult to jump.

"Come on, Jolllly use your four wings!" Bossuet said.

"I'd like to fly, but my wings have been so denied!" Joly lamented.

"I'll lower the branch for you," Jehan said, moving agilely to the other side of the tree pushing the branch down so that Joly could reach it. The branch still supported his weight as he was hanging there.

"I can't quite figure out how you're still up there with that big head of yours weighing you down," Bossuet teased Joly.

"How could you, L'Aigle de Meaux?" Joly said, pretending to be sad.

"Your head is so big that you have to step into your nightshirt," Bossuet teased.

"How does he know this?" Joly asked, pretending to be confused. Since Joly's big head didn't make the branch break off, he was able to get off of the flimsy branch and onto a more stable one higher up. "Okay, now it's your turn," he said to Bossuet. Bossuet easily reaches the lower branch, but it snapped off and Bossuet fell to the ground while holding a large piece of wood.

As Jehan saw Bossuet struggle to climb the tree, he noticed that whatever was making him sneeze was more annoying than it was earlier that day. His nose was running and his eyes were getting a bit teary. "I think you should—" he said, punctuated by two sneezes. "try the other branch," Jehan sniffed. He takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose.

"Are you okay? You look like you just saw a Jean de La Chapelle play," Bossuet said.

"Jean de La Chapelle? He may be a tragedy playwright, but his tragedy plays are the ones that no one cries at because the plot is just too convoluted," Jehan sighed, punctuated by a congested sniff.

"Oh, I know you're not crying. You're sniffling like that because you're not wearing any shoes," Joly insisted.

"Why must you doctors focus on things that have no correlation?" Bossuet jumps and reaches the other branch but again, it broke off.

"You're one to talk, Lesgles. If you were a surgeon, you would probably be worse than Robert Liston," Joly laughed. "You'd accidentally kill five people instead of three."

Joly and Bossuet seemed to playfully taunt each other back and forth, and try to see who came up with the funniest comebacks. Jehan didn't understand why they did this, but he thought of a way to fit in. He observed that Joly and Bossuet often discussed hypothetical scenarios as well, so he decided to give it a try.

"Hey, Joly. Which one of these do you think is the worst scenario: being alone, airborne diseases, or being possessed by the devil?"

"I think I would worry about being possessed by the devil," said Joly. "Because if I'm possessed by the devil, I'm probably going around doing really awful things and killing people."

"I don't think you can remember that. Apparently once you get exorcised you have no recollection of what happened. You'll be saying 'What on earth happened last night?'," Bossuet said.

"You killed 47 people, monsieur," Joly said, imitating a constable who would likely have to explain the crimes that he committed should he go out on a killing spree. "At least if I'm alone I can't hurt anyone."

"Or catch any airborne diseases," Bossuet added.

"Exactly," said Joly.

"And Bossuet, which one of these is the worst: harlequins, another Seven Year's War, or disappointing your parents?" Jehan asked.

"Without hesitation, disappointing my parents," Bossuet answered.

"You'd rather there be a—achoo! another Seven Year's War than to disappoint your parents?" Jehan asked.

"My parents think that I'm a successful lawyer with my own house, but I'm living under a false pretense because I regularly abandon law school, get drunk, and spend the night at friends' houses. Then I'd choose the Seven Year's War, and then harlequins. They're really not that frightening. Dolls scare the living hell out of me though. Harlequins, not so much."

"Dolls seem like little harlequins to me," Joly said.

"Thanks, Joly," Bossuet said sarcastically. "Well now that you put it that way, I guess I'm scared of harlequins, too."

Apparently this was the result when a 29-year-old bald man, a contradictory 27-year-old medical student, and a badly dressed Romantic with bloodshot eyes asking them a bunch of strange hypothetical questions got together.

"Why thank you," said Joly. "Wait, I just realized something; I'm such an idiot," he said suddenly.

"I totally forgot about this. I've read in one of my medical texts that there's something called hay fever, although it isn't necessarily caused by hay and doesn't cause a fever. The term is actually misleading. Anyway, I think the magnolia flowers are making you sneeze, Jehan," Joly said.

"Then I best get off of this tree then," Jehan says, and then he jumps off the branch and sticks the landing. Joly, on the other hand, was afraid to jump off because now that the lower branches were gone, he would be falling from higher up.

"Don't worry, Joly. I'll catch you," Bossuet proposed. Joly hung from the higher branch as his feet dangled down. He let go of the branch, falling into Bossuet's arms, a little rough on the landing.

"Even though I was unable to climb the tree, I still got you, _mon joli_ ," Bossuet says before ruffling of Joly's shaggy blond hair. But unfortunately before putting Joly down, Bossuet took a step backwards and tripped over the branch that he had accidentally broken off the tree a few minutes earlier. Both of them came crashing down with Joly landing on top of Bossuet, and Joly laughed like a witch again. Jehan then proceeds to inadvertently blow his nose like an uncertain trombone player, making a disgusted face upon pulling the handkerchief away.

"You sound like Grantaire," Joly joked.

"Speaking of which, I just remembered that we were planning to meet R at the Corinth today to play dominoes. What time is it?" Bossuet asked.

"It's about twenty past 4 o'clock, but he'll probably be late anyway," said Joly. "But I guess it's better to be late than to arrive ugly, haha".

"You're one to talk, Jolllly," Jehan said. "You look like..." he trailed off, giggling a bit and looking at the ground.

"Say it!" Joly said, excited to finally get teased by Jehan.

"Your head is so big that you look like a lollipop with that swan neck of yours. And put that tongue back in your mouth. You're not a snake. A snake high on opiates would be better at writing lyrics than you."

"Bravo, Prouvaire. Good one!" said Lesgles.

"And I didn't forget you, Bossuet, with your greasy balloon head. You look like a turtle coming out of its shell. You look like an egg gave birth to another egg. Joly probably uses your forehead to look at his reflection. And Musichetta probably uses your head as a crystal ball to tell fortunes."

"Ooohhhh!" Joly and Bossuet cheered simultaneously.

"Am I doing this right?" Jehan asked, confused. And the two other men just smiled at him.

Hey look, I drew a thing. This is Lesgles, Joly, and Jehan. I’m a beginner, so my art style looks like a cheap flash cartoon, lol. Bossuet is giving a Dr. Evil vibe, Joly looks like a combination of Kurt Cobain and Gavroche, and Jehan is rockin’ the medieval minstrel outfit with a Willie Nelson braid.

**Author's Note:**

> \- lyre is pronounced like "liar".  
> \- The poem that Jehan sings is Fragment 1 by ancient Greek musician Sappho.  
> \- Jehan is referencing the Battle of Tours in 732 AD.  
> \- Spanish translation: Joly asks Bossuet why he doesn't know German if he's lived on the border of Germany for 10 years.  
> \- Coincidentally, [Jeremy Bentham](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FvYfuwZvyY) died on June 6, 1832.  
> \- [Robert Liston](https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-robert-liston/anna-lindwasser) was the only surgeon who performed an operation with a 300% mortality rate. In his haste to complete an operation, Liston accidentally chopped off his surgical assistant's fingers. While trying to switch instruments, he also slashed a spectator's coat. The patient and the surgical assistant both died from infected wounds, and the spectator died of shock.


End file.
